-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The player tumbles to the ground , writhing around as if he has been mortally wounded . Television replays , however , show that his opponent has made no contact at all .

It 's an ever-increasing sight on football grounds around the world , and -- in the English Premier League , at least -- it 's becoming an increasingly emotive issue .

Santi Cazorla was labeled a `` con artist '' after his theatricals earned Arsenal a match-turning penalty kick in a game against West Brom on Saturday .

Earlier this season , Liverpool 's Luis Suarez was the subject of countless negative headlines as he went to ground in the penalty area , and Tottenham 's Gareth Bale has been booked four times for diving -- double that of any other EPL player .

The scourge of trying to win free-kicks , and especially penalties , in such a way has long been a thorn in football 's side , with fans often outraged by what they see as sporting fraud . CNN 's very own Arsenal fanatic Piers Morgan took to Twitter to decry Cazorla 's actions , saying he was `` ashamed to see an Arsenal player cheat so badly . ''

One man who has also never been short of opinions on the subject of cheating is former World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Dick Pound .

The Canadian lawyer presided over WADA from its inception in 1999 until 2007 , a year when cycling 's governing body tried to sue him for critical comments about its former chief Hein Verbruggen .

Pound had earned the wrath of Union Cycliste Internationale for saying it could do more to target doping , but his words were comprehensively borne out years later by the U.S. Anti Doping Agency 's report into Lance Armstrong , in which everyday items such as butter -LRB- apparently short-hand for the hormone EPO -RRB- and olive oil -LRB- the vehicle for absorbing testosterone -RRB- took on very different meanings .

Pound believes there are five main reasons why athletes resort to performance-enhancing drugs -- considered by most sports fans to be the worst form of cheating .

`` There are reasons but then there are also excuses , '' he told CNN .

`` 1 . A desire to win at all costs -- even if that means lying .

2 . For financial reasons -- with professionals trying to extend a career .

3 . National pressures -- as exemplified by the old East German system .

4 . Individual pressure from coaches -- who get paid better if they coach winners , and that can apply for administrations too .

5 . Finally , they dope because they believe they will not get caught -- they believe they are invincible . ''

On the latter point , the sad truth is that many do successfully beat the drug testers , as did Armstrong and his former U.S. Postal teammate George Hincapie , who confessed all in a plea bargain in October .

` Leveling the playing field '

`` Early in my professional career , it became clear to me that , given the widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs by cyclists at the top of the profession , it was not possible to compete at the highest level without them , '' said Hincapie , who decided to end his 18-year top-level career .

His account tallies with the view of Ellis Cashmore , a professor of culture , media and sport at Staffordshire University in England who has conducted research into the use of drugs in sport .

`` I do n't think there 's a conscious motivation when people dope to gain an unfair advantage . My strong belief is that they are trying to level the playing field , knowing that there are so many others doping that they will be disadvantaged if they do n't , '' says Cashmore , whose low opinion of drug testers and high hopes for healthier athletes makes him that rarity -- a public advocate for the use of drugs in sports .

`` I wo n't divulge names but one sprinter , who doped with impunity , told me : ` For several years , I was coming fourth or fifth despite training as hard as I could . Yet I knew that the people beating me were n't training as hard nor did they have the same athletic capacity . ' ''

So the sprinter doped -- with the `` leveling the playing field '' argument used by many sportsmen , including Ben Johnson 's coach Charlie Francis , who said the disgraced Canadian was left with no alternative given the riddled nature of athletics at the time he was winning , then losing , the 1988 Olympic 100 meters final .

The plunge into drugs is also tempting because it tends to lead to ever-increasing fortunes , with better performances leading to better results and hence greater earnings .

`` If you use drugs , it 's because you want a shortcut -- a shortcut to everything , '' says South African athlete Hezekiel Sepeng , a silver medalist at the 1996 Olympics whose career ended in controversy when he tested positive for an anabolic steroid .

`` Once you start winning , sponsors will be attracted and then money will come . It is an easy way to make money . Some athletes will dope for four to five years without being caught and will make a lot of money in that time , '' the former 800m specialist , now 38 , told CNN .

`` The big problem in South Africa is that our sportsmen compare themselves internationally . They are young , they 've heard about doping and their mind tells them that they need drugs to beat the rest -- it 's all about meeting goals and people wanting quick money . ''

Pre-USADA , Armstrong had amassed a $ 70 million fortune according to Forbes magazine , while fellow American Marion Jones had several multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals before the sprinter 's drug admission prompted her supersonic fall from grace .

` Sophisticated skulduggery '

At the other end of the scale , lying to earn more money is rampant in African football , where countless `` promising '' players have concocted false -- and younger -- ages in a bid to appear more enticing to any potential Western suitors -LRB- and thus secure a way out of poverty -RRB- .

This year Somalia was thrown out of the 2013 African Under-17 Championship qualifiers , while Niger was disqualified from the 2009 tournament for fielding a 22-year-old and its host Nigeria dropped several of its squad following age tests .

While that might seem an almost understandable form of cheating , the infamous actions of Soviet pentathlete Boris Onishchenko at the 1976 Olympics are anything but .

The three-time Soviet world champion employed sophisticated skulduggery as he rewired his epee so that it would score points when it did not deserve to , as he tried to turn the silver medal he had won four years previously into gold .

His `` desire to win at all costs '' earned him the nickname `` Dis-Onishchenko '' -- though little was heard of him after the Montreal Games .

It is unclear whether Onischenko had acted with the help of the Soviet team , a subject that had great relevance at the time given the ideological battles -- and sporting subterfuge -- of the Cold War .

Onischenko aside , the 1976 Olympics were also notable for the second-place finish in the medal table achieved by East Germany .

A country of just 16 million , it was one of the dominant powers in sports such as swimming and track in the 1970s and early '80s -- which was later explained by the state-sponsored doping system that was uncovered after the fall of the Berlin Wall .

Many athletes were unwittingly doped , with British newspaper The Guardian reporting in 2005 that an estimated 800 later suffered serious health issues . The most public face of the scandal was Heidi Krieger , a female shot-putter who was given so many steroids that she later opted to have a sex change and is today known as Andreas .

While East Germany 's rulers felt sporting glory suitably reflected the successes of their political ideology , so prompting their top-down approach , soccer star Diego Maradona did it the other way -- waging war , quite literally , single-handed .

After his `` Hand of God '' goal in the 1986 World Cup helped Argentina beat England , one of football 's all-time greats justified his deception by referencing his country 's unhappiness over the 1982 Falklands War . Argentina lay claim to the islands , which it calls Las Malvinas , over which the British have sovereignty .

As clearly seen , the pressure to succeed often takes sportsmen and women into unexpected territory . We are often told that tiny factors make the difference in top-level sports , yet the measures used to gain them are often anything but insignificant .

Examples abound -- but how many can prove the point better than Nelson Piquet Jr. 's intentional crash in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix , following team orders , which enabled Renault teammate Fernando Alonso to win the race after the safety car came out ?

With F1 teams spying on one another , boxers loading their gloves with weights , marathoners crossing the finishing line without running the distance , rugby players using fake blood capsules to feign injury -LRB- and so enable a team substitution -RRB- and Spain 's 2000 Paralympic basketball gold medalists later stripped of their title after nearly all their team were revealed to have no disability , arguably the very concept of `` sport '' has been defeated .

There may even be a measure of sympathy for the international sports bureaucracy -- the men and women running global sport 's governing bodies . They would seem to need a full-time investigation unit to weed out all the ingenious methods being used to cheat .

With that in mind , is it any wonder that FIFA -- as it tackles the debilitating threat of organized match-fixing in soccer -- has enlisted the help of worldwide police agency Interpol in recent years ?

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Arsenal midfielder Santi Cazorla 's theatrics reignite debate about diving in football

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Former anti-doping chief gives five reasons why athletes choose to cheat

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World 's major sports organizations face major battle to combat sporting fraud